Volume 74 / Part 8 — CHAPTER XLII.

For my own private choice, I don’t know whether I should have preferred to live at Larches or the Heronry. People who like aristocratic-looking houses of imposing size and respectable age would have preferred the latter. But there are others whose ambition does not soar so high—who would feel encumbered by space which they could not occupy, and by galleries and apartments to them superfluous; yet who have sometimes, when dreaming in a verandah in the tropics, a snow-hut of some northern region, or a narrow cabin at sea, figured to themselves a snug English home, not too remote for the world’s affairs, nor too public for seclusion—not so large as to be dull without visitors, nor so small as to be unfit to accommodate them—not so grand as to invite inspection, nor so unadorned as to disappoint it—standing, in fact, on the boundary which divides comfort from ostentation; and such would have preferred Larches.

Yet, ah! that air from Queen Anne’s time that breathed about the Heronry—that library, where Samuel Johnson might have devoured books in his boyhood—the trim gardens, where Pope might have sat in fine weather, polishing his mellifluous lines—the gateway and porticoes that Vanbrugh might have regarded with paternal complacency, as hooped dames and bewigged cavaliers passed underneath—all these were pleasant to the eye and mind that love the picturesque and antique.

Yet even these advantages would not weigh in the scale for a minute, when Larches was inhabited as now. Place Lady Lee and Orelia in the balance, and the Heronry kicks the beam. They would have made a hut in Tipperary, or South Africa, or any other pagan and barbarous region, more alluring than the palace of Aladdin.

However (to describe its intrinsic advantages), Larches was a onestoried house, too spacious to be called a cottage, which, however, it resembled in shape, and surrounded by a deep verandah open from the eaves to the ground. To please a caprice of Orelia’s, the slated roof had been covered with thatch—indeed, she exercised her fancy in so many alterations, both of the house and grounds, that the place was like a dissolving view, and never presented the same appearance for two consecutive seasons. The house stood on a knoll which raised it above the surrounding garden, except at the back, where the north winds were repelled by a small grove rising from a high bank. In the front rank of this grove rose three tall larches that gave the place its name. The verandah kept the sun from the apartments, but the windows, opening to the ground, admitted plenty of sober light. Looked at from without, the open verandah and the large space occupied by windows and doors gave an idea of extreme airiness; while the rich heavy curtains that lined the windows, and the glimpses of luxurious furniture behind, conveyed ample assurance of comfort.

Hither Orelia had brought her friend, and here she applied herself to soothe her sorrow. Many offices would, perhaps, have suited Orelia better than that of comforter—but her affection and warm sympathy for Lady Lee made her discharge it with right good-will.

When Hester had entered the hall, at the conclusion of their journey, Orelia came up and kissed her.

“We will forget now,” she said, “that you have ever been Lady Lee. We will revive in substance, as well as in idea, the old times when you were Hester Broome at the parsonage; and we will see if there is not yet in store for you as bright a future as ever you dreamt of in your imaginative days.”

A thin elderly person, holding a handkerchief to her face to keep off the draught, was hovering about an inner door of the lobby as they entered. This was Miss Priscilla Winter, the lady who did propriety in Orelia’s establishment, and managed the minor details thereof. She had lived with Orelia’s mother as a companion, when the young lady herself was a child, and had subsequently accompanied the latter to Larches. She was a good kind of ancient nonentity, without any very decided opinions on any subject, resembling, indeed, rather a vague idea than an absolute person. As she always had a smile ready, and agreed with everybody, Priscilla was sufficiently popular and endurable. At present she smiled a welcome on one side of her face only, because the other was swelled—a frequent symptom of the perpetual toothach which afflicted her.

“Here’s Frisky,” said Orelia, on seeing her; “dear old Frisky!—good old Frisk!” and she went up and greeted the old lady very cordially, as did Lady Lee.

Orelia called her Frisky, not because of any particular fitness in the appellation, but, having a way of her own of altering people’s names, she used to call her first Priskilla, then, when she wanted to coax her, Prisky, which suggested Frisky, and the total and glaring inappropriateness of the epithet tickled the inventor so much that it was permanently adopted by her. The old virgin preceded them into the drawing-room, where a comfortable fire was blazing, and told them dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour.

“And how are the live stock, Frisk?”

“All well except Dick, who had a fit yesterday,” said Miss Winter, “but he seems quite cheerful again to-day.” Dick was a bullfinch.

“I’ll see him presently,” said Orelia, “but first I must visit Moloch.”

“Take care, my dear Orelia,” said Priscilla; “Francis has got him chained up—the cook says she thinks he’s going mad, for he hasn’t drank his water to-day.”

“Stuff!” said Orelia, marching out of the room.

Moloch, a great yellow bloodhound, flecked with white, chained in the yard, thundered a deep welcome as his mistress went towards him, and upset his kennel in his eagerness to jump upon her. She unstrapped his collar, and he preceded her backwards in a series of curvets to the drawing-room, yelping joyfully, and nearly upsetting Priscilla, whom Orelia found occupied in settling Lady Lee near the fire, that she might be warm before taking off her things; for the old lady was a great hand at coddling people, if permitted.

“Hester looks pale, poor dear,” said Priscilla, with a heart-rending sadness of tone and aspect—“ah, well, she’s had her trials and”—

“Now, I’ll tell you what it is, Frisk,” interrupted Orelia, looking sternly at the old lady, “I didn’t bring her here to be made dismal, and if ever I hear you saying anything of a doleful character, I’ll leave a chink of your bedroom window open at night, and give you a stiff neck.—I will, as sure as your name’s Frisky.” And this speech at once produced the desired effect; the venerable spinster caught her cue with alacrity, and the unswelled side of her face at once assumed an expression of great cheerfulness.

Dinner was presently announced. “I’m afraid the dining-room will be chilly,” mumbled Priscilla, “and this terrible face of mine—would you mind it, my dear, if I sat at dinner in my bonnet?”

“Not in the least, my tender Frisk,” quoth Orelia; “and pray bring your umbrella and pattens also.”

A few days after their arrival, they went down to the parsonage where Hester had formerly lived with her father. Orelia was curious to see what effect the memories attached to the place would have upon her ladyship. She saw her grow flushed and excited as they passed the familiar cottages, and trees, and fields along the road. She saw her excitement increase as they came in sight of the parsonage. A glimpse of it was afforded from the road, as it stood at the end of a lane, and looked down upon a lawn dotted with dwarf firs. That glimpse showed it little changed; but as they entered the swinging gate, opening on the gravel path that curved round to the front of the house, the place seemed to Hester to have dwindled. Perhaps the spacious proportions of the Heronry dwarfed the parsonage by contrast—perhaps her remembrance had flattered the scene—perhaps it had lost its interest together with its former inhabitants—for, her father having died soon after her marriage, a new clergyman now lived there, and neither he nor his wife were likely to renew much of the romantic atmosphere of the spot—at any rate, Hester’s associations vanished rapidly. The furniture was all so different: there was a new door opened in the sitting-room, which might be a convenience, but was to her an impertinence—her bedroom, the chamber of her maiden dreams (ah, sacrilege!) was now a nursery. The walls where the echoes of Hester’s voice, as she read aloud, or sung, or said her prayers, ought yet to have lingered, resounded to the squalls of the latest baby published by the prolific clergyman’s wife, and the clamour of its small seniors. A cradle had taken the place of her bookcase; and her bed, whose white curtains had once enclosed the poetic dreams and bright fancies of the virgin Hester—the very altar-piece, as it were—was occupied by a rocking-horse with its head knocked off. Scarcely worse the desecration, when the French stabled their chargers in the cathedrals of Spain.

She descended to the porch, and paused there, trying to recall her former self as she had sat in its shadow, reading, working, dreaming, fancying that the world was paradise. She wondered what could have made her fancy so; it had, indeed, been blissful ignorance, but very silly, nevertheless: her eyes were open now, and she was quite sure—yes, quite—she should never see things again surrounded by such delusive splendour. The Hester of eighteen had been quite a different person from the Hester of twenty-five. And so sad seemed to be the train of thoughts thus aroused, and bringing with it so many silent tears, that Orelia was sorry she had carried her well-intended visit to the parsonage into execution. She mentioned it in a letter to Rosa; and here, in common type, wherein it loses all the character it gained in the original, from that bold yet feminine hand, with its long upstrokes and downstrokes, and its audacious dashes, we will insert Orelia’s letter.

“Dearest Rosalinda,” (it said,) “what is there about you, do you suppose, that you should be so constantly in my thoughts as you are, to the utter exclusion, of course, of all kinds of rational contemplation? For how can any serious or important idea be expected to remain in company with that of a little laughing, redfaced thing? In vain I banish the pert image; it comes back with all the annoying and saucy pertinacity of the original, till I actually catch myself addressing it; and my first impulse, on waking of a morning, always is to pull you out of bed.

“People sometimes say of their deceased relations (especially if they have left them any money), that it would be wrong to wish them back to this scene of trial. And I grow somewhat resigned to your absence, when I think that you are probably much happier where you are. For Hester and I are very dismal, Rosey—not a bit better than we were during the last sad weeks at the Heronry. She grows paler, Rosetta—paler and thinner every day. And I don’t think ’tis owing to any failure of mine in carrying out our plan for her benefit. I have, in every possible way, closed up the avenues to sad recollections. I have avoided all allusions to her married life, as if it had been wiped out of my memory with a great wet sponge. I have nearly choked myself by arresting, on the brink of utterance, observations that might have awakened in her mind some train of thought ending in a sigh. I have endeavoured to interest her in her old occupations here, and to get her to resume the subjects of conversation and of fancy that used to delight her in the old times, when she was the most enthusiastic and bright and hopeful of friends; and I have had my labour for my pains. She wandered through my hothouses with most annoying apathy—stood on the very spot where she and I first saw one another, and which I expected would have had an electrical effect on her, with an absence of recognition that quite exasperated me; and when I wished her good night, in the very bedroom that was always allotted to her when weather-bound at my cottage, she returned the benediction without one allusion to the old days that have departed apparently for ever.

“Well, Rosetta, I persevered, nevertheless—yes, I did—I struck my great coup—I took her down to the parsonage, where she was born and bred. Long after her father’s death it stood untenanted; but a new family now live there. I watched the effect of each familiar object that we passed on the road; her breath now and then came a little quicker, and, at the first distant glimpse of the house, her colour rose, and she smiled more naturally than she has done any time these three months. ‘Now,’ said I to myself, ‘the old Hester is going to peep out of this melancholy mask;’ so I said, by way of assisting the metamorphosis, ‘Do you remember anything about that stone, Hester?’ pointing to a great white one by the side of the road. Now, by this stone hangs a tale, Rosamunda. You must know (if I never told you) that Hester and I had once a little quarrel; and as it’s so long ago, I don’t mind saying ’twas all my fault. Well, we did not meet for two or three days, for Hester was hurt, and I was sullen; but then, by a simultaneous impulse, we started to meet and be reconciled. Hester was near this stone when she caught sight of me, and, forgetting all cause of offence, ran towards me. In her haste (’twould take a deal to make her run now, Rosey) she tript on the grass at the side of the road, and fell with her head against the corner of the stone. There she lay for a moment, stunned, and I, who had just reached the spot, sat down on the stone, and, taking her head on my lap, vowed, after she had opened her eyes, and assured me she was but little hurt, that I would never again offend her.

“She remembered it well, she said, as I stopt and pointed to the spot; then, pressing my hand, ‘Though I am not so demonstrative now as then, you must not think my friendship colder, dear Orelia,’ she said. This looked all very promising, and I walked on in great spirits, awaiting the further effect of the coming scenes.

“The clergyman’s wife had called on us, so our visit had an excuse. The porch looked just as it used—we entered; but there, in the identical spot where Mr Broome used to sit and talk to us, when a pause in his disorder let him brighten up for an hour or two, with the benignity of a Socrates—his pale face glowing, his dim eye kindling, and his failing voice hardly able to keep pace with his eloquent flow of thought—there sat his successor—fat, contented, vulgar. The first words he spoke, in tones that seemed to struggle through layers of beef and cabbage and Yorkshire pudding, dissipated the romance that lingered for me and Hester about the scene. And his wife! I don’t deny that the woman may have good qualities, Rosa; but I never can forgive her that cap of hers—nor her furniture—nor her younger sister, with her vulgar affectation of well-bred ease—nor her mode of addressing her husband—she called him by the initial letter of his horrible surname.

“In vain I struggled with these prosaic influences—in vain I tried to recall the old memories of the place—they had absolutely deserted me. I did not look at Hester, for I should only have looked disappointment. I did not speak to her, for I had nothing to say. But I looked at the clergyman and his wife and sister-in-law—daggers, Rosetta—and I was glad, when we departed, to see them reduced to a state of terrified and silent civility.

“So this part of the project signally failed. Hitherto we had lived altogether by ourselves, for I did not wish to annoy her with the task of making a parcel of new acquaintances, not likely to be particularly interesting either to her or to me. But now I thought visitors might rouse her from her melancholy, and I let them come.”

The time when Lady Lee and Orelia were most disposed to be communicative to each other was the last hour before they went to bed. Both, after flickering fitfully between dinner and tea, musing, looking into the fire, sighing, &c., would brighten up into temporary effulgence, before undergoing the extinction of sleep.

“You are cheerful to-night, Orelia,” said Lady Lee, one night after some guests had departed. “I am happy to see it, my dear. Come closer,” said her ladyship, passing her arm round her friend’s waist, and drawing her on to the sofa beside her. “I want to whisper to you. May I venture to hope” (this in Orelia’s ear, from which she had brushed back the volume of black hair that hid it) “that you have forgotten that little romance of yours?”

Orelia silently turned, and sat facing her with her black eyes, without answering.

“You never confided in me in that matter,” said her ladyship, still whispering, though there was nobody but those two in the room, and the servants had gone to bed. “I shouldn’t speak of it now, only that I observe some symptoms occasionally which make me still doubt the direction of your thoughts. Can I help to guide them back to tranquillity?”

“No, Hester,” said Orelia; “I don’t want any aid. I’ve come to a resolution of my own accord.”

“Tell it me,” said Lady Lee.

“How can I tell you all?” said Orelia. “You didn’t know him. To you he was merely what he appeared to the world—to me he was himself—the manliest, the cleverest, the most independent, the—ah, you smile; but, had you met him in his true position, you would have thought of him as I do.”

Lady Lee squeezed the hand of the somewhat indignant enthusiast. “Who so apt as I to believe,” she said, “that when Orelia Payne admires, the object is an elevated one? Well, dearest?”

“Well,” said Orelia, “I dreamt at the Heronry a sort of dream—that he would regain his position in the world, and be all you or any of my friends could wish. He left me apparently with some such expectation; but now I see it was fallacious.”

“But a man could scarcely make a very great stride in the world in a couple of months,” observed Lady Lee.

“’Twill take years, perhaps,” said Orelia, “even if he ever succeeds; and consider the chances against him. And, except as successful, I shall never see him—he is prouder than a fallen angel.” Here she paused, and pondered a little. “But,” she resumed, “I have resolved to think no more on that subject. Yes, resolved!” (stamping with her foot, while her colour heightened, and a tear came into her eye). “It can do no good—it will be vain, weak, idle—it will be wasting life in unreality; therefore it shall end”—(another little stamp).

Lady Lee looked at her with a kind of serious half smile. “So earnest, Orelia!—then the cause cannot be slight.”

“It is not,” said Orelia petulantly. “I am ashamed to think how much it has engrossed my thoughts. And yet—everything considered—so much merit in so unfitting a position! Had he been placed where he deserves, I should perhaps have withheld my admiration; but indignation at the way in which fortune and the world have treated him lent it double force. Now, Hester, I have been franker than you—for we both had our secrets; had we not?”

It was Lady Lee’s turn to redden and be silent.

“Hester,” went on Orelia, “what do you think of the men who sometimes come here? Is there one of them fit to be named with either of those to whom we gave—I mean to whom we would have given—our hearts? Think for a moment of the best of them—and then place their images, side by side, with those I speak of. Don’t they dwindle?—don’t they show like wax-work beside sculpture, with their fleeting hues of character, their feeble melting outlines, their stupid conventionalities?”

“You are severe, my dear,” said Lady Lee, without, however, heeding much her own reply—for Orelia had confused her.

“O, it scatters my patience!” said her impetuous friend. “I think less of myself when one of them has hinted admiration. Yesterday, that worthy noodle, Mr Straitlace—he who thinks it good to be wise, but not to be merry, and whose expressive eyebrows proclaim all pursuits to be vanity except his own—had the astonishing effrontery to give my hand a kind of meaning squeeze, at taking leave, muttering something about ‘his pleasure at recognising a congenial spirit.’ What have I done, Hester, to deserve that?—the owl!”

“I don’t see the congeniality, certainly,” said Lady Lee, smiling, “more than between an owl and a—peacock, or any other majestic bird.”

“Then there’s that baronet Sir Dudley (you seem to have an attraction for baronets, Hester)—that well-dressed Mephistopheles, with crow’s feet about his eyes and his heart at five and twenty, who has just cleverness enough to find out the faulty side of everything—he had the impudence, after looking at you as if he were judging a horse, to pronounce that ‘you had some good points,’ which from him is equivalent, I suppose, to high praise.”

“I hope he specified the points that struck him,” said Lady Lee, smiling.

“He hadn’t time,” returned Orelia. “I felt downright savage at the idea of such a snail as that crawling on your petals. I asked him who had told him of your merits? for that we all knew him to be slow at finding them in anything.”

“And what did he say?”

“He turned to his next neighbour and merely said, ‘Shut up, by Jove!’ Why, compared with these people, Major Tindal grows respectable; for though he has but one side to his character, ’tis a manly and decided one.”

“Poor, misguided Major Tindal,” said Lady Lee; “to think that he should have taken the trouble to come all the way here” (the Major hadn’t been able to forbear singeing his wings again), “just to do hopeless homage to a girl who talks of him in that way.”

“Certainly he had better have stayed at Doddington,” said Orelia. “But, now, Hester, tell me—could you admire, or ever be induced to love, any of our present acquaintances, after having seen others so much worthier?”

“I will go farther than that,” said Lady Lee, resuming her habitual tone of melancholy, which she had relinquished for one of assumed gaiety, merely to cover the confusion that Orelia’s home-thrust had caused her; “I will say that we never could have admired or loved them in any case.”

“And yet they are not below the average of those we shall meet in our pilgrimage,” said this severe censor; “and that brings me to a subject I have for some time thought of. You and I can never link our lives to people of that sort.”

“Never,” said Lady Lee, fervently.

“Neither will we spend them in vain regrets,” said Orelia. “In men that would be unmanly, and in us ’twould equally be unwomanly. We will drive out thought—we will leave it no avenue to enter—we will place a quickset round our hearts. Some do this by openly relinquishing the world, and taking vows; our resolutions shall be none the weaker because we only take our vows privately, and to one another.”

Lady Lee looked at her friend inquiringly.

“Why should we have done with life because we have been disappointed in one of its objects?” said Orelia. “Why should we languish or let ourselves rust because those we prefer are withheld from us? We could not be content to go lingering and dreaming all our lives.”

“Not content, certainly,” said Lady Lee. “But what are we to do?”

“Make business for ourselves in the world,” said Orelia. “Be of use—turn our energies to account. How many women younger than we quit a life of ease without our provocation, and devote themselves to one of active usefulness! We might be the founders of an unprofessed sisterhood. What do you say, Hester? When shall we begin?”

“When?” said Lady Lee. “My dear, such a thing requires thought.”

“Say a week,” said Orelia.

“A week!” cried Lady Lee—“a year you mean. Nuns have a noviciate.”

“And a contemptible thing it is,” said Orelia, “that hovering between two worlds, as it were—that lingering on the bridge, shilly shally. No, Hester; we won’t show any such want of confidence in ourselves—we will begin after a week’s trial. We must commence by closing up all paths to thoughts that might unsteady us—lay aside at once poetry, romance, music, except anthems and oratorios. We will prescribe for ourselves a simple dress and a uniform and disciplined life. Come, are you not anxious to begin?”

“I do almost catch a gleam of your enthusiasm,” said Hester. “To relinquish my present life will be no privation” (with a sigh). “But we must mature the idea before acting on it. We must not begin lightly.”

“Lightly!” said Orelia. “I’ve been thinking of it these four days. And, for our plan—feeding the poor—educating the ignorant—comforting the sick—there is a field! So much for our duty towards our neighbour—for ourselves, we will improve and occupy our minds with study, and I was going to say meditation; but I’m not so sure whether our meditations would be always on profitable subjects, at least not just yet. When nuns turn out not so good as they might be, who knows what share meditation may have had in it? We’ll act now, Hester, and put off meditation till we grow older.”

Now, there was something in Orelia’s proposal that was not unpleasing to Lady Lee. To banish thought which she found so wearisome—to occupy time that hung so heavy—to labour with an object and obtain a result—these were what she had long desired in a dreamy sort of way, and, now that the more energetic Orelia had struck out the path, she was ardent to follow it. Thus the mind would be provided for; and, for the heart, why shouldn’t she and Orelia, her chosen friend, be all in all to each other? which last idea was, perhaps, even more brilliant than the other.

Accordingly the noviciate commenced forthwith. They had, in Hester’s maiden days, studied together French and Italian; they now began a spirited attack upon the German language. Mathematics was desirable, as it required attention, exercised the mind, and did not excite the imagination, and they plodded away at Euclid and algebra with a perseverance praiseworthy in an ambitious freshman, but, in them, lamentable to behold. The piano remained unopened, the harp untouched, except on Sunday, when they performed a piece out of Handel. Lady Lee’s copy of Corinne was put in the fire by Orelia, who had never particularly admired the work; and, indeed, a great part of their library underwent such a weeding as Don Quixote’s suffered at the hands of the barber and curate. Both were dressed in mourning before for Julius, so no great change was needed in their attire. To crown all, they discovered, in a couple of days, some babies in the smallpox and croup, three distressed families with the fathers out of work, and a pair of rheumatic old women, so that their charitable resolutions were not likely to fail for want of objects.

It is very well known that heroines of respectability ought to be naturally benevolent. They ought, moreover, to have a happy knack of winning the hearts of all who experience their bounty. I would with pleasure bestow on my heroines all the good attributes that belong to them, but I have already said they were far from faultless, and, to say the truth, the line they had chosen was not their forte. Lady Lee’s fastidious taste was speedily revolted by misery, whose pathos was impaired by selfishness or coarseness; and Orelia, after a visit to one of the rheumatic patients, left a sovereign for the sufferer, and vowed she would never go near that horrid old grumbler again. In fact, this was one of the points in which they were both of them inferior to Rosa. Their benevolence sprang from a sense of duty, and was artificial in expression, like the conversation of one who has learnt a foreign tongue grammatically; while Rosa’s was natural, and fluent in the happiest idioms of goodness.

However, they persevered, and, though they were striving against nature, their conduct was quite natural. Women are never so enthusiastic about their duties as when they have just been disappointed in love. Your pretty Puritans are sure to have had an attachment blighted, and Devotion is called in, like a Beguine, to dress the wounds made by that rascal Cupid.

But yet, reader, if Hester and Orelia should really persist in their project, what a glimpse of the possible is here opened! Let imagination hold up the curtain for a moment.

Methinks I see Orelia, aged say about thirty-five; severe of aspect, and with what novelists call “the traces of former beauty,” though the arch of the nose has strengthened to Roman firmness, the mouth is quite stern in its decision, and the fire of the eyes has some fierceness in its sparkle. Irreproachable, but not amicable—unsparing to the indiscretion of others, and having none of her own—rigid in the performance of duties, as well as in exacting them—I see her, in fact, become that formidable being, an exemplary woman, and I should like to see anybody make love to her now.

Lady Lee, too, now getting on for forty, has changed from what we knew her. She is not called, like Orelia, an exemplary woman, but is stigmatised by the equally opprobrious epithet, a superior person. Her eyes, dimmed with long perusing of good wearisome books through a veil of tears, are still beautiful in their melancholy, but the rest of her charms have withered. She does not discharge her duties with the unfailing spirit of the more energetic Orelia, but requires a new weary effort for the performance of each; and when the old obstinate question recurs of what her business in the world may be, she silences it by a contemplation of the indurated virtues of her friend, which she nerves herself to imitate. There are no more confidences or confessions of weakness between herself and Orelia, but a friendship such as might have subsisted between the Mother of the Gracchi and Mrs Fry. They are punctual in ——, but, as Sterne says, when the idea of his captive becomes too painful, “I cannot sustain the picture that my fancy has drawn.” Fane—Onslow—to the rescue!

245